Examining a 'Nation at Risk'

About the Author

It's all too easy for lawmakers to throw cash at a problem.
After all, they're spending somebody else's money. Take the way
they've handled (or, rather, mishandled) education policy.

Twenty-five years ago, the National Commission on Excellent
Education released a brutally honest study detailing the failings
in our school system: "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted
to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that
exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."

In response, all levels of government declared war the way they
usually do: by increasing spending.

This year, American taxpayers will spend more than $9,200 on the
average public-school student. That's a real increase of 69 percent
over the per pupil expenditure in 1980. The total bill for a
student who remains through high school will be almost
$100,000.

This spending would be worthwhile if it gave us the results we
need to compete globally. But it hasn't been doing so. American
students still score poorly compared to students from other
countries, especially in math and science. The National Assessment
of Educational Progress shows 18 percent of fourth-graders and 29
percent of eighth-graders scored "below basic" in mathematics last
year.

And far too many students drop out. At least 1 in 4 quits high
school. Among minority children, the picture is even bleaker. In
2002, only 56 percent of black and 52 percent of Hispanic students
graduated, compared to 78 percent of white students.

The Census Bureau has found that a full-time employee with a
college degree will earn more than $2 million over a lifetime. One
with only a high-school diploma will earn half as much, while a
dropout, obviously, will earn even less. More ominously, an
independent study found dropouts die an average of nine years
sooner than graduates.

Our educational system is a national problem - but one that calls
for local solutions. One approach is to provide school
choice.

The District of Columbia and 13 states have choice programs, and
as many as 150,000 children will use publicly funded scholarships
to attend private school this year. Research shows the programs are
helping students.

They're popular, too. School choice gets parents involved, and
parents are happier with their children's education when they can
choose their schools. Researchers also have found students who have
moved to private schools get better grades.

And because the cost of a private school scholarship is almost
always less than what states invest per student in public schools,
the school the student leaves has more money to spend on its
remaining pupils, who end up in smaller classes. That, plus the
competition for students, has driven many local schools to
improve.

Accountability matters as well. Consider Florida, where lawmakers
created an innovative testing model to make sure students were
learning, and also to help students escape failing schools. The
results are in: Florida's public-school students have demonstrated
significant improvement on federal reading and math exams compared
to students nationally.

We also know what doesn't work: Federal mandates such as No Child
Left Behind. That law required states to test students, but it ends
up giving states an incentive to "dumb down" their tests to
maintain federal funding.

A 2006 study by University of California researchers found the gap
between state and federal proficiency scores had increased in 10 of
12 states examined since NCLB was enacted. It's better to simply
let states provide the funding and hold themselves
accountable.

The District of Columbia and 13 states are demonstrating the value
of our federal system, where we experiment at the state level and
then pick the best for our nation.

We have big problems in our education system. But we'll solve them
from the bottom up, not the top down.

It's time to slash the regulation and start creating the
educational system our students deserve.

Ed Feulner is
president of the Heritage Foundation (heritage.org). This
article first appeared in the Washington Times.